The significance of this paper is mainly to bridge some aspect of artificial life and nonequilibrium thermodynamics.
The quantum mechanical framework has been chosen so as to keep things in terms of basic resources such as atoms, photons, and their interactions.
It turns out that the model may be thought of as illustrative of Walker and Davies viewpoint [1]}, in that genetics is a digital form of information processing (simulated here with quantum bits), to be contrasted with the analogue form of information processing in metabolism (simulated here with continuous pulses).
From a quantum information perspective, this paper can be seen as the quantum thermodynamics of a quantum cloning process [2]}, [3]}, [4]}, [5]} driven by single photons.
Even though the words `cloning' and `self-replication' can be used interchangeably here, the option for the latter is motivated by the original goal of mimicking lifelike information processing with an out-of-equilibrium physical system.
